posted on Nov, 27 2020 @ 04:05 AM
Read an interesting academic paper by a scholar named Priscilla Hunt titled, Ivan IV's Personal Mythology of Kingship. Pretty dense and hard to
get at one go, but her idea was based on something called "Wisdom Theology" that was common in Russia when Ivan was Tsar. I will try to do it
justice.
It seems to be built on a hierarchy of pairs, highlighting the opposite nature of God/Christ at different levels, followed by Wisdom, and finally at
the lowest level the Tsar and his people. These opposites defined a spectrum and an unspoken middle at each level.
The Tsar was part of this divine hierarchy and was defined on several levels himself: for example at one end of the spectrum was his "meekness" and at
the other end was his sterner "severity." A perfect Tsar would possess both qualities.
Below the Tsar, the nobility should help "mediate" this dualism and below them were the people, who mirrored the same qualities on a humble household
level. Thus all if creation existed in a kind of mirroring hierarchy with each level from God to Peasant defined by the balance of opposites.
However, due to his wretched childhood at the hands of the nobility and his later paranoia (justified or not) that they were plotting against him,
Ivan felt he could not trust the nobility to act in its Heaven-appointed role of mediating and taking some of the weight off his regal shoulders.
Because they would not accept his "severity" he could not show them "meekness," and the system became fundamentally shattered and unbalanced in Ivan's
eyes.
He thus subconsciously felt he had to shoulder the entire national burden of "severity" and "meekness" by himself to keep the state functioning in the
divine hierarchy. he thus felt the need to be "twice as neek" and "twice as severe."
His exaggerated "meekness" took the shape of "rolling in the lowest filth of being human": reveling in torture, gluttony, materialism, debauchery, and
excess. It also invved long religious devotion, groveling before God as the lowest of men.
His hyper-"severity" also involved torture, plus rape, slaughter, pillage, invasion, and so on.
In his twisted mind he took on the two extremes to lunatic heights because he felt it was his role to balance the divine hierarchy, which was
threatened because the nobles wouldn't play their part.
One person's interesting analysis, based on lengthy speeches and letters written by Ivan.